[Some months ago,
concerned by a Paris statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of
Princeton regarding his concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on
fertilizer production, I tasked FTW's Contributing
Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start looking into what
natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production costs. His
investigation led him to look at the totality of food production in the
US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world, the answers have
global implications.

What follows is most certainly
the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the
most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. Even
as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly
acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week,
acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less
than predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been
devoted to the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of
publicly accessible thinking.
– MCR]

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT -- Human beings (like all other
animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last
century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived
from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate
animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately
derived from the sun.

It would have been absurd to think that we
would one day run out of sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant,
renewable resource, and the process of photosynthesis fed all life on
this planet. It also set a limit on the amount of food that could be
generated at any one time, and therefore placed a limit upon population
growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of flow into this planet. To
increase your food production, you had to increase the acreage under
cultivation, and displace your competitors. There was no other way to
increase the amount of energy available for food production. Human
population grew by displacing everything else and appropriating more
and more of the available solar energy.

The need to expand agricultural production
was one of the motive causes behind most of the wars in recorded
history, along with expansion of the energy base (and agricultural
production is truly an essential portion of the energy base). And when
Europeans could no longer expand cultivation, they began the task of
conquering the world. Explorers were followed by conquistadors and
traders and settlers. The declared reasons for expansion may have been
trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at its base, it was all
about the expansion of agricultural productivity. Wherever explorers
and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off loot, but they
left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and establish their
own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until there was no
place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day, landowners
and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural
productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all
of the productive land on this planet is being exploited by
agriculture. What remains unused is too steep, too wet, too dry or
lacking in soil nutrients.1

Just when agricultural output
could expand
no more by increasing acreage, new innovations made possible a more
thorough exploitation of the acreage already available. The process of
“pest” displacement and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with
the industrial revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened
the clearing and tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland
which could be tended by one person. With every increase in food
production, the human population grew apace.

At present, nearly 40% of all
land-based
photosynthetic capability has been appropriated by human beings.2
In the United States we divert more than half of the energy captured by
photosynthesis.3 We have taken over all the prime real
estate on this planet. The rest of nature is forced to make due with
what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species
extinctions and in ecosystem stress.

The Green Revolution

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a
drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture.
Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to
more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green
Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain
production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase
in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This
additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight,
nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land.
The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the
form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon
fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the
energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input
of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases,
energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6In the United States, 400 gallons of oil
equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data
provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy
consumption is broken down as follows:

·31% for the manufacture
of inorganic fertilizer

·19% for the operation of
field machinery

·16% for transportation

·13% for irrigation

·08% for raising livestock
(not including livestock feed)

·05% for crop drying

·05% for pesticide
production

·08% miscellaneous8

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration,
transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not
considered in these figures.

To give the reader an
idea of the energy
intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of
nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to
1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering
the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer
Institute (http://www.tfi.org),
in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used
12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using
the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of
nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of
diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.

Of course, this
is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy
requirements for modern agriculture.In a very real sense, we are literally
eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there
is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in
agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss.

Between 1945
and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop
yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has
continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield.
We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet,
due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and
increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined
below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy
expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green
Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Fossil Fuel Costs

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited
only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the
other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly
limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are
nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can
draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted
without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit
and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United
States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we
consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people
in developing nations.Agriculture directly accounts for
17% of all the energy used in this country.12 As of 1990, we
were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce
food of one hectare of land.13

In 1994, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro
estimated the output/input ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.14
For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal) of fossil energy consumed, U.S.
agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The input figure for this ratio
was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN)
statistics, which consider only fertilizers (without including
fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without including
pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field operations.
Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and
machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to
and from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of
farm buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these
energy costs brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.15
Yet this does not include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to
retail outlets, refrigeration or household cooking.

In a subsequent study completed later that
same year (1994), Giampietro and Pimentel managed to derive a more
accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel energy ratio of agriculture.16
In this study, the authors defined two separate forms of energy input:
Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy. Endosomatic energy is
generated through the metabolic transformation of food energy into
muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is generated by
transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning gasoline
in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at fossil
fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.

Prior to the industrial revolution,
virtually 100% of both endosomatic and exosomatic energy was solar
driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of the exosomatic energy used in
the United States and other developed countries.17 The
typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered societies is
about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed countries,
climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90 to 1.18
The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as well.

The vast majority of endosomatic energy is
no longer expended to deliver power for direct economic processes. Now
the majority of endosomatic energy is utilized to generate the flow of
information directing the flow of exosomatic energy driving machines.
Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in the United States, each
endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the US induces the circulation
of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a small gasoline engine
can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline into 8.8 KWh
(Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for one human
being.19

In their refined study, Giampietro and
Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to
produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food
system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes
household cooking).20The U.S. food system consumes ten
times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity
is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.

Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal
per capita
for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into
a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day.
However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic
labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow
of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in
only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you
remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111
hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S.
daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to
produce.

Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production
begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy
available for the production of food.

Soil, Cropland and Water

Modern intensive agriculture is
unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil
erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even
(largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health
and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water
resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and
hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be
applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more
energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.

It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of
topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by
decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from
erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture,
erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22
Former
prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States,
have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years.
This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.23
Food crops are much hungrier than the natural
grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining
topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral
depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S.
agricultural soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the
Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour
hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.

Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million
acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging.
On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another
1 million acres annually from farmland.24 Approximately
three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to
agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding human
population is putting increasing pressure on land availability.
Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available
for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar
energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise
limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or
biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.

Modern agriculture also places a strain
on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S.
freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is
occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and
south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to
a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only
supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in
some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground
water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of
rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored
ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The
great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use
in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual
overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will
become unproductive in a matter of decades.28

We can illustrate the demand that modern
agriculture places on water resources by looking at a farmland
producing corn. A corn crop that produces 118 bushels/acre/year
requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of water during the growing
season. The production of 1 pound of maize requires 1,400 pounds (or
175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is done to lower
these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel the
United States into a water crisis.

In the last two decades, the use of
hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet
each year we lose more crops to pests.30
This is the result of the abandonment of
traditional crop rotation practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land
is grown continuously as a monoculture.31 This results in an
increase in corn pests, which in turn requires the use of more
pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had increased 1,000-fold even
before the introduction of genetically engineered, pesticide resistant
corn. However, corn losses have still risen 4-fold.32

Modern intensive agriculture is
unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and
polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more
fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to
provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to
hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel
input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

US Consumption

In the United States, each person consumes
an average of 2,175 pounds of food per person per year. This provides
the U.S. consumer with an average daily energy intake of 3,600
Calories.

The world average is 2,700 Calories per day.33
Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast food. Fast food
accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the average U.S.
citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of four.34One third of the caloric intake of the
average American comes from animal sources (including dairy products),
totaling 800 pounds per person per year. This diet means that U.S.
citizens derive 40% of their calories from fat-nearly half of their
diet. 35
Americans are also grand consumers of
water. As of one decade ago, Americans were consuming 1,450
gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest amount expended on
agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase, consumption by
2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider to be
minimal for human needs.36 This is without taking into
consideration declining fossil fuel production.

To provide all of this food requires the
application of 0.6 million metric tons of pesticides in North America
per year. This is over one fifth of the total annual world pesticide
use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.37 Worldwide, more
nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied through
natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground
aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of
important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly
approaching exhaustion.38

Total U.S. energy consumption is more than
three times the amount of solar energy harvested as crop and forest
products. The United States consumes 40% more energy annually than
the total amount of solar energy captured yearly by all U.S. plant
biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North America is five times
the world average.39

Our prosperity is built on the principal of
exhausting the world's resources as quickly as possible, without any
thought to our neighbors, all the other life on this planet, or our
children.

Population & Sustainability

Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per
year, the U.S. population is projected to double by 2050.
As the population expands, an estimated one acre of land will be lost
for every person added to the U.S. population. Currently, there are
1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each U.S. citizen. By
2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. 1.2 acres per person is
required in order to maintain current dietary standards.40

Presently, only two nations on the planet
are major exporters of grain: the United States and Canada.41
By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter
due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S. economy could be
devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually.
More importantly, millions of people around the world could starve to
death without U.S. food exports.42

Domestically, 34.6 million people are living
in poverty as of 2002 census data.43 And this number is
continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many of these people do not
have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens, this number will
increase and the United States will witness growing numbers of
starvation fatalities.

There are some things that we can do
to at
least alleviate this tragedy. It is suggested that streamlining
agriculture to get rid of losses, waste and mismanagement might cut the
energy inputs for food production by up to one-half.35 In
place of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, we could utilize livestock
manures that are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock manures
contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each year.36
Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet
altogether.37

Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel
postulate that a sustainable food system is possible only if four
conditions are met:

4.Population size and consumption must be
compatible with maintaining the stability of environmental processes.38

Providing that the first three conditions
are met, with a reduction to less than half of the exosomatic energy
consumption per capita, the authors place the maximum population for a
sustainable economy at 200 million.39 Several other studies
have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy and Population,
Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of
Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel,
David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm).

Given that the current U.S. population is in
excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92
million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster,
the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third.
The black plague during the 14th Century claimed
approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half
of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a
darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41

None of this research considers the
impact of declining fossil fuel production. The
authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural
crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become
critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production
(and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North
American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this
agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S.
population reduction of one-third will not be effective for
sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half.
And, for sustainability, global population will
have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to
2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade
could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade
could see massive starvation on a global level such as never
experienced before by the human race.

Three Choices

Considering the utter necessity of
population reduction, there are three obvious choices awaiting us.

We can-as a society-become aware of
our
dilemma and consciously make the choice not to add more people to our
population. This would be the most welcome of our three options, to
choose consciously and with free will to responsibly lower our
population. However, this flies in the face of our biological
imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the ability of
modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of the
Religious Right to consider issues of population management. And then,
there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in
order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best
choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.

Failing to responsibly lower our population,
we can force population cuts through government regulations. Is there
any need to mention how distasteful this option would be? How many of
us would choose to live in a world of forced sterilization and
population quotas enforced under penalty of law? How easily might this
lead to a culling of the population utilizing principles of eugenics?

This leaves the third choice, which
itself
presents an unspeakable picture of suffering and death. Should we fail
to acknowledge this coming crisis and determine to deal with it, we
will be faced with a die-off from which civilization may very possibly
never revive. We will very likely lose more than the numbers necessary
for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario, conditions will
deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population would be a
negligible fraction of the present population. And those survivors
would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their
civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those
survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.

The questions we must ask ourselves now are,
how can we allow this to happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does
our present lifestyle mean so much to us that we would subject
ourselves and our children to this fast approaching tragedy simply for
a few more years of conspicuous consumption?

Author's Note

This is possibly the most important article
I have written to date. It is certainly the most frightening, and the
conclusion is the bleakest I have ever penned. This article is likely
to greatly disturb the reader; it has certainly disturbed me. However,
it is important for our future that this paper should be read,
acknowledged and discussed.

I am by nature positive and optimistic. In
spite of this article, I continue to believe that we can find a
positive solution to the multiple crises bearing down upon us. Though
this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is simply a factual
report of data and the obvious conclusions that follow from it.